Saturday, 7 July 2012

VANITY FAIR: MULTINATIONAL COMPANY EDITION

I work with a Multinational company whose
Global Head-Office is in India and Africa Head-Office is in Kenya. If you like,
snort and laugh in derision at the two countries I mentioned above, I know I
work with a truly multinational company. There are so many perks in working with a truly multinational company in case you do not know: for instance, Guinness
full-employees attaching a photocopy of their official identity card makes
securing a UK visa something akin to Lionel Messi scoring a goal, too easy; and
I bet they don’t detain Multichoice full-employees at Oliver Tambo
International Airport, Johannesburg, asking for one nonsense yellow card.

Interestingly, what I consider as the major
perk in this multinational company is the opportunity it affords me to observe
at close range – women and their over-reaching vanities. You see women at
different stages of struggles to best not only others but their personal self. You
do not need any copyright permission to rename my company’s Head Office “Vanity
Fair Building”, and I am sure the name will be more than apt. Name it: kids/issues,
vacations, shoes, wears, accents, cars, anything, is an opportunity for my
colleagues to display vanity.

The perfect place to start this exposѐ is in the morning and in the convenience, because that is when and
where the day starts, isn’t it? The usual time that you have traffic in the
female conveniences is early in the morning. You might be wondering: Don’t they
have toilets at home? Don’t they keep their toilets at home clean? Don’t bother
yourselves, the reason why they go into the toilet has nothing to do with
answering the call of nature, but answering the call of make-up. Facilities
managers are actually employed to manage my multinational company’s
conveniences, so it is always spic and span; and have I mentioned the
conveniences have a lobby that is fitted with mirrors covering 75% of the walls?
The lobby provides a stage to display the art of make-up application: touch-up
the eyeliner, dab some blush, rearrange the Brazilian/Indonesian/Indian hair,
rub some hand-lotion, and do whatever you can imagine women doing when they
make up. Don’t start asking me how I get to know what they do in there, and
don’t allow your mind run riot, please chase the devil away before it possesses
your soul, I don’t go into the female conveniences, but I know what they do there, I have
LadyRash don’t ever forget that please. But the funniest part of the whole
thing is what they do on coming out of the convenience compartment, the first
person they see, they greet in so loud a voice it can wake the dead up, the
mission is to make sure they get your attention and you see the fantastic results
of all the minutes in the convenience.

Next we move to the small matter of
VACATIONS. Note that word “vacation”, we do not call it “leave” in my
multinational company, we call it “vacation” and when it is just a few days, we
just refer to it as “taking some time off”. If you go on vacation, the day
before you resume, just travel to Shoprite and get all those London chocolates
and bring along to the office as you resume; that way you would have fit in
very well, and if you can add a little accent to it, then you would
have fit in perfectly. What I am saying is none of the women in my office has
ever spent her vacation in Nigeria, unless she is planning to resume in another
company.

Hush please!!! I want to reveal a secret to
you; I hope you are reading alone? Check behind you to make sure no one is
reading this over your shoulder because what I am about to tell you is a very
important top secret that the SSS are not even aware of. ALL THE WOMEN IN MY
OFFICE ARE TERRORISTS, NOT JUST TERRORISTS, THEY ACTUALLY COME TO THE OFFICE
WITH WEAPONS OF MASS DISTRACTIONS!!! They come to the office every day in these
high heels that make this ko-ko-ko-ko-ko-ko-ko-ko-ko
sound that whatever you are doing and however deeply you are immersed in
it, that ko-ko-ko-ko-ko-ko-ko-ko-ko sound
will terrorise you into submitting to being aware of its annoying presence. I
mean you will expect these ladies to sit down in one place, but I bet you that
is the last thing they do, they keep strutting up and down and all over the
place, and driving you mad like Terry-G’s music. That ko-ko-ko-ko-ko-ko-ko-ko-ko sound will become imprinted on your
consciousness, etched on your subsconscious, embossed on your imagination and
carved into your memory; if you do not hallucinate about it afterwards, just
rest assured you cannot die by any accident, only by natural causes. And none
of my female colleagues wear anything made in Nigeria, I cannot verify, but
every one claims so.

Seriously, I mean seriously, as in no
jokes, the next time you see a caring man, whether married, engaged, or just in
a relationship , his wife, fiancee or girlfriend works in my multinational
company’s Head Office. And the next time you come across an uber-smart kid,
find out from him/her, the mum must definitely work in my multinational
company’s Head-Office.

5 comments:

SirRash, u gave a whole lot to laugh about in this piece yet not compromising the need to learn. I still wonder why both the male and female human species are referred to as homo sapiens...I think we're different enough to answer to different specific names - like giving them 'homo insatiate'. I hope all our madams aren't gonna read this sha. It's between you and I alone o! Jah bless, bruva.

I like this! I can say it as many times as you'ld believe- I like this!

This is quite informative and reveals your skills at observing. However, what makes a lady who she is and a man who he is? I believe we have a social identity which, most times, defines our personal identity. A child is born innocent but the society (starting from the immediate society) informs the child how to live in order to fit well into social classifications. A mum will tell her daughter, "Be girlie! You are not a Tom-boy. Paint your nails darling!", while the father tells his son, "Courage! Courage! Courage is the word; be courageous my boy! you are a man! Don't talk too much; act it! Leave ladies to their things".

On another note, ladies in a multinational company will live up to a certain class because they are paid to do so. The people resources in an organization tell a lot about the brand as well as the products they sell do.We all know how companies feminize their marketing strategy.

I appreciate your detailed observation (Am I allowed to appreciate this as a creative piece?).